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Week 12: Look ma, I'm a lollipop!
Fetal development in pregnancy week 12
2 in | 5 cm
0.5 oz | 14 g
Despite being a super-dooper grower, your little Einstein’s body is still far behind the astonishing growth of their amazing brain. In other words, your baby is still a bobble-head, as their massive noggin' comprises 30% of their entire body mass!
Bobblehead aside, your little lollipop's neck is up to the challenge and straightening out quite nicely as can be seen by their little chin lifting off of the chest.
Your baby is also actively rehearsing “breathing” by inhaling and exhaling amniotic fluid (ew!) to prepare the lungs for future air respiration.
The big news: your little poop-n-pee factory is now up and running!
Don't worry, most of the liquid waste wends it way down to your bladder, just adding to your million-times-a-day rides on the porcelain pony.
The solid waste - aka their first baby poop is just starting to build up in their intestine (it's a super-slow build-up, since it's all derived from liquid blood) in preparation for that tarry black meconium newborn poop.
Along with all the lovely poop-n-pee talk, we thought you'd like to know that your baby now pees into their amniotic sac and then inhales it through their mouth and nose.
YUCK! Not to worry, their urine is completely sterile and harmless, no matter how gross it seems.
Share your baby's development on Facebook!
And how's mom doing?
To state the obvious: as your baby grows so does your uterus.If you've been experiencing a burning sensation that extends from your breastbone to your throat after meals, congrats, you've got heart burn!
By now, your once-flat and relatively small uterus is stretched to the size of a softball (12-14 cm), but that’s nothing: by the time you deliver it will have grown to 15 – 17 inches (37 – 42 cm)!
Right now, your uterus is slowly growing at a steady rate of one centimeter per week.
If you've been experiencing a burning sensation that extends from your breastbone to your throat after eating, congrats, you've got heart burn!
This oh-too familiar issue is essentially your digestive system struggling to break-down and move the crap (fresh fruit and veggies don't give you heartburn) you're eating and backing up until there's stomach acids where there shouldn't be.
It's fairly straightforward to prevent heartburn by eating smaller meals, drinking more water, going for after-meal walks to get things moving, and avoiding fried, spicy, and fatty foods. That shouldn't be hard to do because you've already cleaned up your diet and are only eating the best whole foods possible, right?! RIIIIIGHT.
All sarcasm aside, heartburn is a fairly simple index of how badly you need to get off the carb-binging, fast-food shoveling, crap-eating ways that're considered "normal" and acceptable by most of modern society.
Come on mama! You can't just shove any old thing into your face anymore and expect no retribution from your highly sensitive digestive tract and one very dependent little womb-resident. Nothing less than premium grade fuel will do!
Go back and read Week 9 if you're not sure exactly what "premium grade fuel" is yet.
As your pregnancy becomes more physically visible, you’ll have to adjust to people asking you when you’re due and perhaps the single most annoying part of pregnancy - getting unsolicited advice from strangers who’ve “been there.”
Which reminds us: since you're rolling into the "safe" second trimester (greatly reduced risk of miscarriage) this is probably the right time to share your pregnancy news (if you haven’t already) with close family and friends.
Allowing those you trust and love an active role in your pregnancy encourages participation and support for the future—when you’re really going to need it!
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